Editing Self-determination (section)

=== Defining "peoples" ===
There is not a recognized legal definition of "peoples" in international law.<ref>[http://www.cambridge.org/gb/academic/subjects/law/public-international-law/statehood-and-self-determination-reconciling-tradition-and-modernity-international-law] Duncan French, 2013, Statehood and Self-Determination Reconciling Tradition and Modernity in International Law, p.97</ref> Indeed, [[Ivor Jennings]] called Wilson's doctrine "ridiculous" because, though on the surface it seems reasonable to "let the people decide", in practice "the people cannot decide until someone decides who are the people".<ref name="Oxford University Press"/>

Reviewing various international judgements and UN resolutions, Vita Gudeleviciute of [[Vytautas Magnus University]] Law School finds that, in cases of non-self-governing peoples (colonized and/or indigenous) and foreign military occupation, "a people" is defined as the entire population of the occupied territorial unit, no matter their other differences. Meanwhile, in cases where people lack representation by a state's government, the unrepresented become a defined as a separate people. Present international law does not recognize ethnic and other minorities as separate peoples, with the notable exception of cases in which such groups are systematically disenfranchised by the government of the state they live in.<ref name="Gudeleviciute" />

Other definitions offered are "peoples" as self-evident (from ethnicity, language, history, etc.),{{Explain|date=May 2024}} or defined by "ties of mutual affection or sentiment" ("loyalty", or by mutual obligations among peoples).<ref>{{cite book|author=Pictet, Jean|title=Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949|year=1987|publisher=Martinus Nijhoff Publishers|pages=52–53|display-authors=etal}}</ref>

Professor Uriel Abulof suggests that self-determination entails the "moral double helix" of duality: 1. personal right to align with a people, and the people's right to determine their politics; and 2. and mutuality (the right is as much the other's as the self's). Thus, self-determination grants individuals the right to form "a people," which then has the right to establish an independent state, as long as they grant the same to all other individuals and peoples.<ref name="Abulof">{{Cite journal|doi = 10.1080/17449057.2015.1051809|title = The Confused Compass: From Self-determination to State-determination|year = 2015|last1 = Abulof|first1 = Uriel|journal = Ethnopolitics|volume = 14|issue = 5|pages = 488–497|s2cid = 142202032}}</ref>